WHEN Malcolm Turnbull seized the prime ministership five months ago, there were concerns that he would be too autocratic, too daring. Instead, what we have is a sense of drift.

Headlines in recent days tell the story. “Malcolm in muddle”; “Turnbull fails to take risk on growth”; “Turnbull thinks small after large ambitions go bust”; “PM’s policy of caution”.

Not only has he dumped the big-bang tax reform funded by a hike in the GST that the Government had talked up, he couldn’t even do it cleanly, instead simply letting the idea sputter out over a couple of weeks.

Even business figures have started to express misgivings about an apparent lack of policy resolve.

The impression of government caution and drift has opened up an opportunity for Bill Shorten and he has decided to grasp it by taking by far his biggest political risk yet as Labor leader.

Tackling the issue of negative gearing is a gutsy move. Some would call it “courageous” in the Yes Minister sense. That is, “a controversial policy will lose votes while a courageous one will lose the election”.

But Shorten, in the polling doldrums since the Liberals threw former prime minister Tony Abbott overboard, needs to do something to get voters to listen to him; something to cut through the image of wishy-washiness he had started to develop.

Most importantly, he must do something that shows he is serious about economic policy and action to repair the Budget.

It will be hard for critics to accuse the Labor leader of adopting a small target strategy after this.

Shadow Cabinet gave the green light to the new negative gearing policy on Thursday, while the attention of most politics watchers was focused on the National Party’s leadership change and the fate of embattled minister Stuart Robert.

The timing was to allow Shorten to unveil the detail at this weekend’s NSW ALP conference.

If Labor wins the looming federal election, negative gearing after July 1, 2017 will be allowed only on new housing properties, not existing ones.

And the generous 50 per cent capital gains tax discount introduced when Peter Costello was treasurer will be cut to 25 per cent.

At the moment, in 93 per cent of cases, negative gearing is used for investment in existing properties. In other words, it does little to boost new housing stock; next to nothing to produce new jobs in the building industry.

So if economic growth is your aim, negative gearing in its present form is not the way to achieve it.

The scheme also distorts the housing market by allowing investors subsidised by the taxpayer to compete against first-home buyers or people wanting to upgrade their homes.

There will be howls of protest from various interest groups. Shorten and other key Labor frontbenchers — shadow treasurer Chris Bowen and finance spokesman Tony Burke — will need to be at their persuasive best.

But there is a strong case to be argued. The current lurks are a drain on the Budget and impossible to justify in economic terms.

Even the Coalition, desperate to find Budget savings after the aborted GST exercise, has been dipping its toe in the water on negative gearing.

Treasurer Scott Morrison told Parliament on Wednesday: “If there are areas where the system is being abused or if there are areas in the system where they are excessive and there is a way to channel that sort of high-end investment into other areas, well, of course the Government will look at those things.”

Morrison’s answer opened up what will obviously be the Government’s line of attack on Labor’s new policy.

The vast majority of people buying property in this way, he said, were nurses, police officers, teachers and other “ordinary hardworking Australians”.

But Shorten has built an answer to that into his policy with the promise that no one will be worse off.

That is because existing investments — in fact, any entered into before mid-2017 — will be exempted from the proposed changes.

What is happening to Turnbull is fascinating.

His stint as Opposition leader ended in tears in 2009 because he alienated colleagues through an arrogant “I know best” style. He thought consulting was the same as telling.

But in his new incarnation as Prime Minister, Turnbull seems to have gone to the other extreme. Consultation and process get such priority that he fails to convey strength or a sense of direction.

He needs to find the right balance, quickly — before someone suggests he take a leaf out of Shorten’s new book.

LAURIE OAKES IS THE NINE NETWORK POLITICAL EDITOR

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Abbott & Co are going to cause the mother and father of all recessions—be prepared!

Boats is turning negative. Greens who helped abbott block the Malay Solution have blood on their hands too and I tell the fucking hypocrites like Sarah Hanson-Brown who cried crocodile tears (glycerine, cut onion pressed to eyes, meh anyway) that when they post all holier than thou on twitter etc:

ratsakPosted Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 8:23 am | PERMALINKMalcolm is finding the same problem as Howard and then Rudd did.

Whilst the boats are coming the vast majority just want them stopped.

Once they stop? Then people stop worrying about stopping the boats and start worrying about the abuses and mistreatment of those we have in detention.

It’s the fatal flaw in the Libs plans. You can’t stop the boats and not have some humane plan for dealing with those who you have detained.

I bet Turnbull is cursing Abbott for putting the kybosh on the Malaysia deal for short term political gain about now. That’s why the government is hunting around for someone somewhere to take these people and the political problem they are creating for them.

Shorten, if he wanted to be really agile, could move the amendments that the Libs and Greens voted down that would have allowed the Malaysian swap deal to go ahead. Just open up first thing Monday morning of the March sittings and pull that one right out.

Of course the Greens will blow a valve, no one would expect them to support. But the response from the Libs would be beautiful to behold. Does Pyne act like an idiot and shut em down? Or will Turnbull accept that he needs to eat the shit sandwich, expose the Libs disgraceful hypocrisy and admit Abbott and Morrison were just playing the grossest of politics with people’s lives, and concede that any government, even (especially) a Liberal one, needs to maximise the opportunities for resettlement of detained asylum seekers or else their whole ‘Stop the Boats’ rhetoric falls over.

It wouldn’t win him much love from the left, but Bill’s going to get their prefs anyway. I would again show that Shorten and Labor are driving the debate and The Prime Waffler is just spinning his wheels and unable to lead.

1762

(PollBludger)

Abbott & Co are going to cause the mother and father of all recessions—be prepared!

By the company's own assessment, the giant infrastructure project has fallen two-thirds short of its benchmark construction timetable. Connection costs to each house or business are also blowing out.

Oh dear.

The "final design" process for connections - needed before construction can start - is running far behind schedule, according to the February 19 report.

They probably don’t know where all the wires go, Telstra certainly doesn’t, or the state of the copper.

While 1,402,909 premises should have been approved at the date of the report, the figure was sitting at 662,665 - 740,000 fewer than planned.

The snapshot says NBN Co has achieved 29,005 fibre-to-the-node "construction completions", while noting its internally budgeted target for this period was more than three times this at 94,273.

They might speed up a bit with practice but the copper is crap, the address database is not accurate or up to date the power companies are not under NBN Co’s control and the whole sorry mess is going to be a nightmare to complete. If the morons had had an early election late last year, after the thug was deposed by the merchant banker then this wouldn’t matter so much but this crap is now happening in the lead up to an electio and hopefully will be yet another drag on Liberal support.

The report, which was never intended for public disclosure, reveals the extent to which the more than $46 billion project has drifted off course, mainly during the time when Mr Turnbull was in direct control as communications minister

Being Chairman of the Board of Ozemail and selling his stake at the height of the dotcom market was probably easier than overseeing his crazy scheme of MTM of incompatible and obsolescent and obsolete technologies. Utterly useless prat!

. . .the report outlines a plethora of faults, including that delays in power approvals and construction are being caused by electricity companies which account for 38,537 premises or 59 per cent of overall slippages against the target.

Another 30 per cent of delays are down to material shortages and a further 11 per cent are attributed to completion reviews.

"Construction completions currently sits at 29K against the corporate budget of 94K," the report states.

"Gap-to-target has increased from 49,183 to 65,268 at week ending February 12.

"Construction completions gap can be attributed to 3 main issues: power, supply, and completions under review."

Also noted in the report is a rise in the cost per connection of design and construction, which has now reached $1366, compared with the target price of $1114 - a 23 per cent increase.

Sooner, more affordable and all that. In more good news for Turncoat the weather is warming up again and some nodes are going to stop working, the heat exchanger in each node cannot cope with above 30°C temperatures. Gee, summers that never go over 30°C. That may happen somewhere but not in Australia!

Yet the NBN Co's own documents show that for all that money, it remains bedevilled with problems from the slow design approvals by power utility companies (FTTP did not require electrical supply but FTTN does) and as a result of material and supply problems. Even expertise in dealing with the copper network is scarce.

​While the Coalition's pared-back version of the NBN was intended to deliver the system quicker and more cheaply, the company's snapshot suggests some of the design factors of FTTN are causing the bottleneck.

FTTN is the reason for FTTN delivery being slower and more expensive! All this was predicted in detail, the morons didn’t listen and now it is coming to pass, and coming to pass in the lead up to an election! Fitting!

Waffles, local Lib MHR in tow, spruiking the [nonexistent] wonders of FTTN etc etc et nauseating cetera. First question from the journos covering it “PM, most people who connect to FTTN find their speed is less than before.” There was another question along the same lines. Waffles just waffled but FTTN is going to be a boat anchor slowing him down in the campaign.

When forced onto the FTTN crap you are given or have to buy a new router, ADSL routers don’t work with VDSL. The moron should have called an election late last year, now all the faults and problems, faults and problems that were predicted years ago, are coming home to roost and coming home to roost when the moron wants to call a DD.

Late heatwave—lots and lots of nodes will stop working, again as predicted. I have said from long ago that the nodes needed air conditioning. Stay tuned for a chorus of complaint.

Vonnie V ‎@visivozOh, the Abbott 'cough'!! “@_sara_jade_: #MalcolmTurnbull out and about peddling his (look over there) #NBN #auspol pic.twitter.com/IzW4YpNdOC”

11:45 AM - 4 Mar 2016

Abbott & Co are going to cause the mother and father of all recessions—be prepared!

If the government wants to attract real investment – the kind of investment that results in economic growth and well-paid employment – it should attend to the weaknesses in our economic structure. It should raise taxes to invest in education and infrastructure; it should impose a price on carbon and lay out a clear plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transforming our energy-intensive industries; it should tax capital gains so as to discourage short-term speculation (as was the case before 1999); and it should close off tax provisions that divert personal savings to an emerging real-estate bubble.

These measures should all have been on the agenda of the promised public debate on tax reform. Instead, we’re having an election that will be based on a take-it-or-leave-it budget.

Election 2016: devastating poll shows just three per cent of voters support likely budget centrepiece

Just 3 per cent of voters think a company tax cut should be the government’s top economic priority, according to a devastating poll that will put further pressure on the Coalition’s pre-budget planning.

Treasurer Scott Morrison has indicated company tax cuts are on the agenda for the May 3 budget – rather than income tax relief – arguing the best way to drive economic growth was by reducing the tax paid by employers

Following the IPA wishlist Maladroit offers the states some income tax powers.

We had something like this before: Billy McMahon, the worst PM before Howard, abbott & Turncoat, gave the states payroll tax. Interstate rivalry soon saw very high starting points and very low rates of tax. Libs love it but it means big overseas companies dodging company tax no longer pay much payroll tax either.

Putting this here not Friends NBN because it is political not technical.

news The Australian Labor Party has started directly calling voters to ask whether the Abbott/Turnbull Government’s handling of the National Broadband Network will influence how they vote at the upcoming Federal Election, in a sign Labor sees it as a key election issue.